Getting By, Dreaming Big

Date Night

BAHAHAHAHAHA!  That’s all I have to say.  This was the first movie that Jon and I watched when we got on the plane (before we went our separate movie ways…and I ventured into chick flicks watching The Bounty Hunter and Valentine’s Day).  I was laughing so hard (yes out loud) that he kept nudging me, becasue we were on a plane surrounded by people!

Ahhh…where to start.  Steve Carell and Tina Fey play The Fosters (Phil and Claire).  They are a boring middle age couple living in the suburbs of NJ with two kids.  Phil an accountant and Claire a real estate agent have a date night every Friday (let’s say) and every Friday they go to the same place, eat the same meal, see the same people, etc.  Essentially they are stuck in a rut.  When they hear their good friends are getting divorced they decide to spice things up and spend a night in the city!  (Being from NJ and currently living in NYC I could really appreciate what an effort it is to have a date night in NYC).  Needless to say things do not go their way and they get entangled in one big mistake after another, leading to hilarious mishaps.  I’m literally laughing out loud thinking of parts of this movie!

While this is an absolutely laugh out loud funny romantic comedy, at the meat of the movie was, I think, a real serious issue, that of couples not taking care of their relationship, waking up and realizing that maybe they want something different, followed by working together and communicating to make that happen together, and then realizing that what they have is an amazing relationship.  The movie was clever, well done, touching and oh so fun!

Do not miss this one, add it to your netflix queue, run to your nearest red box, or heck, just switch on your TV and go to on demand.  However, you watch your movies, make sure you watch this one. 

4 1/2 stars

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Do you prefer Steve Carell in The Office or in movies, such as Date Night?  I prefer him in movies and I can’t wait for Dinner with Schmucks to come out, based on my favorite foreign comedy, The Dinner Game!

Valentine’s Day

I never saw He’s Just Not That Into You, but I wanted to, and even though everyone says “they weren’t that into the movie” (bahahaha) I will still see it someday.  So obviously I wanted to see Valentine’s Day.  I knew it wasn’t going to be something Jon wanted to watch, so when I saw it as an option on my Luftansa flight, I secretly fist pumped “YES!”

The movie Valentine’s Day follows the stories of 9-11 couples and the upds and downs of love on Valentine’s Day.  People get engaged, break up, find out loved ones secrets, accept each other (flaws and all), fall in love and realize that perhaps friends are more than they think.  The couples runs the gamut of an elderly couple, young couples, parents/children, kid couples and friendships!

Even though there were a lot of story lines I thought the story weaved together perfectly.  It didn’t seem like too much at once.  There were definitely characters you were rooting for and characters you couldn’t stand, but all in all it came together well.

Again, chick flick, romantic comedy, emotional dramedy (is that even a category?) - well I thought it was an emotional dramedy because anything about love always tugs at my heart strings and makes me cry (even a cheesy chick flick!)  I personally really enjoyed this movie.  I put it up there with Sweet Home Alabama, 13 Going on 30 and 27 Dresses – when I see it on FX/USA/TNT/TBS etc - I probably won’t be able to stop myself from watching it – even if it is the 5th day in a row it’s on!

4 stars

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Which did you like better – Valentine’s Day or He’s Just Not That Into You?

The Bounty Hunter

Wow, it’s been a long time since I wrote a movie review!  Well, let’s get to it.  On the plane ride to Zurich my TV did not work (*gasp).  I more than made up for it on the way home watching three movies back to back.  What can I saw Luftansa rocks (I won’t mention the other airline who doesn’t rock).

I’m a sucker for Jennifer Aniston (it has to do with my love of Friends) so I decided (against my better judgement) that I was going to watch The Bounty Hunter.  The premise was more than advertised.  Yes, yes, Gerard Butler plays Milo Boyd, a Bounty Hunter, who’s job is it to bring in his ex-wife, Nicole Hurley (Jennifer Aniston) because she jumped bail, for “assualting an officer”.  That’s what they show you in the commercials.  It runs a little deeper than that because Nicole is working on a story about a recent suicide that she doesn’t think was a suicide but rather a murder – and Milo just happens to be an ex-cop.  You see where this is going…as he’s hunting her, she’s tracking a murder investigation, perhaps she gets to close, and perhaps just perhaps his cop skills come in handy.  Ok, ok, I’m sorry if I gave to much away, but were you really going to see it?  Doubtful. 

Moving on…this movie was light, fun, and while the character development wasn’t deep, in a small way you were rooting for them (to do what – I won’t say)!  It was perfect plane material:  distracting and entertaining.  Was it great?  Naaaawwww, mediocre at best.  Would I recommend it to you?  Nope – but if you find yourself on a plane above the Atlantic for 8 hours - well that’s another story.

2 1/2 stars

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What is your favorite Jennifer Aniston movie?  Now, I haven’t seen them all, but of the one’s I have seen I’d pick The Break-Up.

I wasn’t really in a blogging mood last night, as you can tell by my riviting account of The Blind Side that I wrote.  So I decided to go to bed and start refreshed this morning.  This is my 8th Oscar nominated best picture review – Avatar.

I have to say that I really really didn’t want to see this movie.  It just didn’t appeal to me at all, but I did it for the Oscars challenge.  I went to see this movie with my husband Jon and our friend Gary and they wanted to go all out – 3-D and IMAX.  So that’s what we did.

The premise is that it’s the future and Americans are mining a precious resource on the planet of Pandora.  There biggest obstacle are the Na’vi.  Scientists have come up with an avatar program where Americans get into these little “sleep” pods and are connected to their Avatar.  They can then move around Pandora as their Avatar, looking like the Na’vi.  Jake Sully, a parapalegic marine, loves spending time in his Avatar because he can do everything he can’t do in his real life (run, climb, walk).  He is taken in by Neytiri, a Na’vi.  She believes that he has a deep connection to their god and teaches him their ways.  Things get complicated, when they fall in love, and she discovers that Americans are coming to destroy the Hometree where all the Na’vi live because underneath is is the largest source of the mineral their mining on the planet.

There were things I loved about this movie and things I could have done with out.  My favorite part of the movie was definitely the parts where Neytiri is teaching Jake Sully the Na’vi ways and he’s “becoming” one of them.  The world they created on Pandora was beautiful and it was so amazing to watch them explore and do all these different things.  The CGI was amazing!  I mean I was able to appreciate it and I really have zero understanding of CGI at all! 

I definitely thought the movie was WAY WAY WAY too long!  About 3/4 of the way through I started getting antsy and I just kept thinkng, “when is this going to end”.  Really it’s a story that’s been done numerous times just put in a futuristic setting with Avatars.  At one point Jake Sully says, “get all of the bands of people together” or something to that affect and I thought, “hmmmm, I’m watching Braveheart in the future.”  It’s the typical story of the underdogs coming together to take on the evil empire, it’s nothing new, it’s just in a different format.  The acting was TERRIBLE!  Or maybe it wasn’t the acting, maybe it was the writing, but whatever it was it was terrible.  There were a couple of times I almost bust out laughing due to it!  You’d think with all the money they spent they could have improved some of the dialogue.

Overall, I’m glad I saw it, especially after all the hype.  I thought the CGI and special effects were amazing, but it definitely could have been shorter.

3 stars

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What did you think of Avatar?

Back to movie reviews!  I love watching movies (I’m currently watching 27 Dresses on FX – such a great chick flick – and blogging on commercials)!  So I have two more Oscar movie reviews coming your way.  The first is The Blind Side, who’s ready for football season to start up again – ME!

I was really excited to see this movie, I love football, and I knew it would be a feel good story.  The Blind Side is the story of Baltimore Ravens, Michael Oher.  When he was in high school he was adopted by the Tuohy family.  They took him in, provided him with family, love, trust, an education and helped get him going on the football team.  Before long, with his size, Oher became a huge success at high school football to the point that colleges were looking at him.  This movie was based on the novel, The Blind Side, by Michael Lewis and covers Oher’s time just before meeting the Tuohy’s and during his 4 years of high school.

The tough thing about this movie is that I knew the story going into the theater, so there were no surprises, it was predictable and exactly what you expected of it.  That doesn’t mean it wasn’t good, but I did find it to be long and a bit slow.  I thought that Sandra Bullock was fantastic!  I enjoyed the movie but it wasn’t spectacular.  I would not have nominated it for Best Picture, but I’m sure that when it’s on TV I’ll probably watch it again.  It was exactly what I knew it would be a feel good, heartwarming story.

3 stars

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What did you think of The Blind Side?

I had heard so many great things about this movie and how moving it was that I was excited when it finally was no longer on “long wait” in my Netflix queue.  I had heard from friends that it was an incredibly upsetting/disturbing story so I was prepared to be inspired and moved, while not being uplifted. 

Precious, is a 16 year old, illiterate child (woman?) who lives with her abusive mother in a ghetto in Harlem and has been raped by her father.  The rape, produced one down-syndrome child who is about 2 when the movie begins, and a second child on the way.  Precious suffers severe psychological side effects from this mental and sexual abuse.  At the beginning of the movie Precious begins to attend an alternative school, with a class of just 5-6 other girls where she can receive special attention from the teacher, so that she can learn and grow as a girl and woman.  Her teacher, especially inspires her to reach for her dreams and empowers her to make decisions for herself.  With the help of her teacher and her social worker she is able to find services that help her provide a better life for her children and her.

Wow, let me just say it again, Wow.  This movie sat with me for days and days after I watched it.  It was so awful and so powerful all at the same time.  I think the toughest thing for me is that I know there are people living in the same city that I am facing choices, decisions and days that are similar to those that Precious was facing and that is so disheartening.  It made you have so much respect (and concern) not just for the young women that are living that life day to day but also the teachers and the social workers who are working so hard to change their lives.  They are constantly up against so many things and while there are so many rewarding aspects to these jobs there are so many days where they are disheartened, exhausted, and I’m sure wondering what difference they’re making.  It’s not a easy job, that’s for sure, and I have so much respect for those that choose that path.

While this movie is dark and not uplifting in any way, it’s an important story that needs to be told again and again and again.  If you can get over the upsetting subject matter and really appreciate the message and the story you’ll find this movie to be very powerful.

4.5 stars

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Did you see Precious, Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire?  If yes, what were your thoughts?

Even though the Oscars are a distant memory I’m sure there are those of you (myself included) who didn’t finish watching all the contenders for best picture.  So I’m going to consider the following posts relevant.

I’m not going to lie, when I saw that District 9 was on the Best Picture list, and thus we were going to have to watch it (well, no one was making us but me) I was less than thrilled.  I’m not really into sci-fi, aliens, etc.  It’s just not my thing.  District 9 was a movie I had heard of and filed away in my brain as “no need to ever see”, you know one of those movies you click on Netflix “not interested”.  I summed up my courage and put it at the top of the queue and with a solid recommendation from my friend Meghan (with a strong warning to not eat any food while watching this movie) we settled in.

Extraterrestrial creatures are stranded on Earth and the military assigns them a slum to live in, so that they can keep them all together and monitor them.  At the beginning of the movie we learn that a group called MNU (Multinatinoal United) are assigned to work with the military to relocate all of the “prawns” (the deragatory term for Alien) from District 9 (the slum they are currently in) to an internment camp outside of the city of Johannesburg, South Africa.  Wikus van de Merwe is in charge of this relocation.  However, during the process of evicting the aliens, Wikus comes upon a substances that he accidentally ingests.  He soon starts to feel ill, and it is later revealed that his left arm has mutated to that of an alien.  In the meantime, Christopher Johnson, an alien, his son and his friend are trying to locate alien technology from the ship so that they can return to their planet and escape from life on Earth.

The film is shot mockumentary style, which was very fitting.  It felt at times that you were watching live news footage of something really happening in the world.  To me, this made me think more about how I would react if this was really going on.  It brought it closer to reality than some sci-fi movie I was watching.  It is a perfect story that shows if we put aside our pre-conceived notions of something or someone and really got to know them and the situation that they are in we would certainly handle situations differently.  As the story started I felt one way (scared and not sure I wanted to watch) and as it progressed I definitely felt another way (sympathetic, empathetic, sad, upset and frustrated). 

District 9 is a powerful movie with a powerful message disguised as an alien sci-fi movie.  It is definitely worth seeing and I think that even if there had only been 5 movies in the Best Picture category instead of 10 that District 9 would have been deserving of the Best Picture nod.

4.5 Stars

P.S. –  But don’t eat during the movie, there are some really gross parts.  If you’re no squemish then chow down my friends!

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Did you see District 9?  What did you think?

You want to talk about a blog section that I am so behind on it’s not even funny?  Movie Reviews!  I don’t know how I’m ever going to catch up.  But hey it’s worth a try, so let’s give it a go.  Awhile ago I was writing about how Jon and I were trying to see all the Oscar Nominees for Best Picture.  We made a valiant effort but didn’t quite get there prior to the March 7th deadline.  We’re still working out way through them.

Unfortunately a lot of our movies have had long wait on Netflix because they were in high demand.  This week we finally sat down to watch, the highly anticipated, “An Education”.  Well, it was highly anticipated by me at least.

In “An Education” 16 year old Jenny is seduced by an older man, David, who convinces her that life is worth living, not studying.  He takes her to see music, on trips, to the track, etc.  She finally feels liberated from the life she is drudging through on her way to Oxford.  However, while 16 year olds might think they know everything, Jenny quickly learns that being an adult is not as simple as it seems.  It’s not just about living, it’s about complicated emotions, obligations and expectations.

An Education took place in the 1960′s and had an important and interesting message.  It was a time when woman either educated themselves for limited jobs or married well.  Yet neither prospect allowed women to “live” the way they dreamed.  What was the point of being educated if you couldn’t do what you wanted to, if your future was going to be tied up in the well being of a man and family with very little voice of your own.  Yet, to not educate yourself limited your choices even more.

There were so many things I liked loved about this movie.  The music, the cinematography, the story, the whole feel of the movie.  It almost reminded me of a foreign film, except it wasn’t.  Carey Mulligan was truly like a breath of fresh air, she was just perfect. 

However, the love story itself totally creeped me out.  Not that I’m against large age differences in couples, hey, when you fall in love you fall in love.  However, when one person is not of an appropriate age (let’s say 16 for example) it’s a little unsettling.  I had a difficult time geting past this in the movie.  It just took away from the overall beauty of the story.  That’s just my opinion.

Overall, I would give it 4 stars.  I’m glad I saw it. 

PS – It’s totally cool that I’m listening to French pop as I write this, right?  Totally!

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Did you see An Education?  Did you like it?

This past year as I was attempting to watch ALL of the Oscar nominated pictures (I still have a lot to go…oh well, I’ll get to them eventually) I got to thinking about how many Oscar nominated pictures we watched last year.  So I printed out a list of the nominees for all of the categories and highlighted the ones we saw, the ones we hadn’t seen I added to our Netflix queue.  Since all of the current Oscar nominees/winners have such a long wait on Netflix we decided to watch one we missed last year:  MILK.

Sean Penn won the Best Actor nod fro MILK last year and Dustin Lance Black won the Oscar for Best Screenplay written for the Screen.  Meanwhile, MILK was nominated for countless other categories.  I have to say we were not disappointed.

MILK is the story of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to hold office.  The movie chronicles his move to San Francisco with his boyfriend Scott, them becoming small business owners, and then Harvey’s quest to win the Supervisor role in San Francisco for the Castro neighborhood.  I don’t want to give too much away in the event you’re not familiar with Harvey Milk and his story.  I was not very familiar with the story and I liked watching it unfold before me on the screen.

Sean Penn gave an AMAZING performance as Harvey Milk.  I actually thought the whole cast really showed up for this one.  There wasn’t an actor that I thought didn’t really own, develop, and live their part well.  I also loved the feel of the movie.  The timeframe is 1970-1978 and throughout the movie the movie scenes are mixed in with some real/actual footage from that time (the campaigns, newsreels, protests, etc).  I had a very difficult time discerning which was the actual footage and which was the movie footage (well, if it wasn’t for the famous faces I guess).  The film quality and color quality was very authentic to the 70′s and I loved that. 

One of the bonus features on the DVD introduced us to the real people from the actual story and it was amazing to see them and to hear what they’ve accomplished since 1978.  It was also uncanny how much some of the actors really looked like the person they were playing.  Casting obviously did a good job.

Overall, it’s a very powerful, inspiring, and moving story about fighting for what you believe in, fighting for your rights, and never ever giving up.  I would highly recommend this movie!

5 Stars

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Have you seen MILK?  What did you think of it?  Do you like Sean Penn as an actor?